Awesome stuff with the frankencamper pics, Yggy! Uh-oh's right, thankfully it all managed to hold for ya. Are you going to have the water cannon all charged up for the event again? I can't remember if you ended up getting to play with that and put it to use at all....

hah yeah Trilo. The canon is always "charged" I carry 400 or so gallons of water out there.........about 40 seconds at full power (200 psi).I may just surprise my pals at gate this year...........hahaahhaaa

Pandorra and I are working on some furniture designs for our space. Now that a big project she's been working on has wrapped up, she put a bit of time into tweaking and revising the designs, and making a 3D model. A big multi-purpose countertop/table that would be able to accommodate anything from rolls of fabric and other textile projects to an extension of our kitchen/cooking area (behind the stick figure is where our kitchen's at), to a comfy social gathering space. Then off to the side we'd dial up a custom elongated curved desk that would give her plenty of room for her iMac as well as the Juki.

pani work area 1.jpg

Underneath the big table we'll have space for storing fabric rolls as well as some bins.

pani work area 6.jpg

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Figjam, I'm working on a new design from one of yours: the PACU, Portable Auxiliary Cooling Unit. Swamp cooler, 12v solar/battery, portable and designed to feed into a tent or mount to the cab of MV/work rig/van/trailer. Pics soon...

M*A*S*H 4207th: An army of fun.I don't care what the borg says: feather-wearers will NOT be served in Rosie's Bar.When I ask how many burns, I mean at BRC.

On a side note, if you split the crotch out of your pants and a piece of slag finds its way in there, don't try to fix the problem by stapleing the seam closed unless you would like short sharp surprise later in the day!!!

FIGJAM wrote:On a side note, if you split the crotch out of your pants and a piece of slag finds its way in there, don't try to fix the problem by stapleing the seam closed unless you would like short sharp surprise later in the day!!!

Figgy!!!

Hope you're okay. Your new playapod is shaping up!!!

"You can be whoever you want to be, and sometimes people laugh and sometimes they clap, and mostly and beautifully they don't really care."

FIGJAM wrote:...On a side note, if you split the crotch out of your pants and a piece of slag finds its way in there, don't try to fix the problem by stapling the seam closed unless you would like short sharp surprise later in the day!!!

I've been trying real hard all day not to say anything about how to avoid spitting pants while working on stuff.

So I'll just say that I'm sitting here designing a bicycle-powered "Rube Goldberg" device that delivers a refreshing spray of water onto the rider. The Mist-O-Matic. We need something like that at the front of the bicycle repair camp. So maybe I'll have something to show here over the winter.

Tamarakay,My mom and I have tables in our sewing/crafting room and the solution for the cutting table was to put those bed risers under each leg. It makes the table a better height for layout and cutting. The risers are under $8 normally and if they arent the right height for you Ive also seen people use PVC (schedule 40 for strength) pipe in a size that will slide over the table leg (if you have the folding leg type table so that the pvc doesnt slide all the way up the table leg) you can cut the pvc to the right length to suit your needs.

Save the back and CRAFT ON!!

So the theme this year is like a giant camp out in the desert? With people bringing lots of shit from all over? uh.. -Marscrumbs

@tamarakay, the island table will be a 36 inch height, which I think is typical height for kitchen counters. It's the same height we've got on a big workbench that we've already got in the space. This lets us not only use standard bar stools, but helps save on back and leg fatigue.

Over the weekend we had a great 'breakfast meeting' at Rocco's (local dive of awesomeness), and had fun tossing around ideas and design considerations at each other. She showed me her latest set of 3D renders, but once the food arrived it was all about the eggs benedict...

Then we hit up one of my favorite area lumber yards. Not the cheapest place in town, but they have a great selection of hardwoods and exotic stuff. Some great reclaimed barn wood too, though that wasn't on the menu for our projects. At breakfast, Pandorra had said that she didn't care if the desk and the artspace island were made from matching wood, in fact the side desk was more of a cast-off idea, to use whatever would get the job done simply, versus putting a lot of time and energy into getting the island just right.

So she spent some time ogling and feeling the wood, and getting a sense of what might fit, versus the cost, etc. That would give her things to think about, both for future design revisions as well as the painting/coating once it's built. I think we've settled on this stuff...

It's called baltic birch. It's a little spendy, but incredibly strong and really beautiful. It's the same kind of wood used for the connectors on Otic Oasis (2011/2012), the Pistil inside last year's man pavilion, and the Temple of Whollyness from this year's burn. Plans have been revised a couple times since then, and I imagine we'll revise them another couple times before it gets built. I'd have liked to have started cutting and building asap, but we're waiting until after we get back into town (going away this weekend).

While we were at the lumber yard I picked up a router bit I wanted to get for the project, so I can round the corners a bit on the countertop for the island (it'll come in handy on other projects, too). Then we scored bonus points, as they had a piece of finished maple that would work out nicely for the side desk. We paired that up with some hardware from the container store, and voila... side desk!

They didn't have all the drawer baskets she wanted in stock, so we'll circle back and pick those up once they came in. And yeah, that lamp shade is a little torn up, our recently departed cat discovered that he could tear holes in it with his giant mutant paws one day, and we just haven't gotten around to replacing it yet.

I think that when all is said and done on the island, I'd get a rubber mat and carpet runner under the 3 sides that we'd be working around, as that would make things a lot easier on the feet, legs, and back when we're standing. Anyhow, that's our progress on the project for now.

The upside of our trip to LA being so short was that it cost less. Which in turn means we can get moving on building the artspace island a little sooner. Yesterday I swung over to our storage space and grabbed the leftover clearcoat from the Ziggurat, as well as a dropcloth, the router, and the sawhorses. Then we hit up our friendly neighborhood big box hardware joint and grabbed a bunch of the materials we'll need.

I wanted to use 'connector red' from the Ziggurat for the legs, but Pandorra preferred black. We couldn't remember how much we had at home, or whether it was in the loft or buried deep in storage (I still have to go back through and re-organize it post-burn), so we got another gallon (it'll get used). She also opted to upgrade from using basic 4x4's to some fancier posts - the lumber's better quality and pre-finished (which will save some time). Tomorrow or Friday I'll head over to the lumber yard to get the baltic birch plywood for the top and shelves, then head on over to my workshop joint to cut and make all my parts.

That picture looks like a van I used to make bank runs in, while an was an Army MP at Ft.Bragg. Open bottom with safe welded to frame. We could drop and roll out with our shotguns. parking lot camouflage.

I've been feeling under the weather for the last few days. I'm still sick now, but was able to get myself up and moving this morning. I got to the lumber yard and got the baltic birch I wanted to use, then headed on over to my local workshop place to start making parts. I used the table saw, chop saw, and band saw to cut the boards, and the panel saw to cut the shelves.

And that's today's progress. This weekend my girlfriend will round the corners on the countertop and skinny shelves for the fabric rolls, and then I'll router and sand everything that needs to be routered and sanded. Then painting and coating all the parts, as well as drilling and screwing it all together. Fun stuff!

Believe me, I can sympathize with ya there. Lugging and loading sheets of plywood gets a bit tricky in SF in the late afternoon on days when the fog comes in. Tricky as the job may be, it looks like you managed to get 'er done. Nice work!

Meanwhile, I finally slid into home today with the artspace island project. All the parts had been given either a couple coats of black or 3 coats of clear-coat and had the chance to dry overnight. This morning I started putting the pieces together.

We had originally opted to go with smaller steel brackets for the shelves that'll hold the fabric rolls, but I made a last-minute substitution and went for heavier duty brackets. It's completely overkill for fabric rolls, but this way if we end up using the shelves for something else I don't have to worry about whether the shelf will support the weight or not.

A little bit more assembly work, and it's done!

Well, very nearly done. Pandorra's going to put a few more coats of the clear-coat on the shelf tops and edges. My part's done though. I'm happy with how it came out, especially since I just kind of eyeballed it from the rendered pics she'd sent me and the conversations we had. It's going to be nice to have a workbench big enough to handle fabric rolls, and still get barstools under the lip. Great for projects, cooking, or being social.